New Releases by George F. Walker

Orphans for the Czar ruefully exposes the duplicity, revenge, and self-interest at the core of a culture about to go up in flames. Suggested by Gorsky's novel The Life of a Useless Man and set shortly before Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg, the play focuses on a hapless double agent as he tries to stay on the right side of both the revolutionaries and the czarists. The orphaned fool Vasley leaves his impoverished village to work in his uncle's bookstore in the city, and becomes engrossed by the women, the intelligentsia, the spies, and all their conflicting ideologies. A comedy of pathos about the fragility of people in unstable times, Orphans for the Czar is also a plea for the possibility of decency.

Canada’s top playwright sears the page with three new darkly comic plays that denounce political culture, individualism, and the accompanying moral depravity. The title play, Dead Metaphor, examines the collision of a politician’s personal and professional lives, complicated by a son’s return from Afghanistan. In The Ravine, a mayoral candidate learns that his ex-wife is living in a gully nearby and wants to put a hit on him. The Burden of Self-Awareness has money at the centre of a dramatic conflict of values. Each of the three plays is populated by characters trying to navigate the increasingly blurred lines of what’s right and wrong - trying to always stay informed, alert, and ready to act for the common good. Or just to get even.

An allegory of our post-9/11 lives, but also a paean to the will that carries us through our darkest hours.

Recognizable characters play out their coincidental relationships in a city park. Cast of 2 women and 4 men.

Contains Walker's own selection of his early plays: Beyond Mozambique, Zastrozzi, Theatre of the Film Noir and Nothing Sacred.

Six plays that take place in the same hotel room, including "Problem Child," "Risk Everything," "The End of Civilization" and others.

Escape from Happiness takes place in the kitchen of an old, slightly rundown house in a not-so-classy section of a large city. It's home to Nora, a good-natured, slow-moving, fairly batty middle-aged woman; her daughter Gail, who is tough, sensible, and a little high-strung; Gail's husband Junior, an affable but rather dim fellow. Also living here is Tom, who is dying of some unspecified disease; Tom is, according to Nora, a stranger who looks exactly like (and coincidentally has the same name as) her husband, who deserted the family ten years ago after trying to burn down the house.